91m; U.K.
Director: Peter Cattaneo
Cast: Robert Carlyle, Tom Wilkinson and Mark Addy
Synopsis: Six unemployed steel workers form a male striptease act. The women cheer them on to go for “the full monty” – total nudity.
Trailer
Category Archives: Working Class
Human Resources (1999)
100m; France
Director: Laurent Cantet
Cast: Jalil Lespert, Jean-Claude Vallod and Chantal Barré
Synopsis: The 35-hour work week has all of France in its thrall. This film turns it into a feature about economic and familial politics. Frank, a business school graduate, returns to his provincial hometown to take a management position in the factory where his father has been working for 30 years. First Frank makes the mistake of actually asking the workers on the assembly line for their opinions. Then upper management manipulates his findings to lay off employees. This creates a huge rift, not only between labor and management, but between father and son. A human morality tale that evokes paternal and filial love, and illustrates the personal risk behind political ideas.
Full Film (in multiple parts)
Hula Girls (2006)
110m; Japan
Director: Lee Sang-il
Cast: Yasuko Matsuyuki, Etsushi Toyokawa and Yû Aoi
Synopsis: Billy Elliot meets “Shall We Dance?” Japanese coal-mining town tries to deal with loss of jobs.
Contact: http://www.fortissimofilms.com/catalogue/title.asp?filmID=311
Trailer
Man Push Cart (2005)
87m; U.S.
Contact: Ramin Bahrani
Cast: Ahmad Razvi, Leticia Dolera and Charles Daniel Sandoval
Synopsis (IMDB): A night in the life of a former Pakistani rock star who now sells coffee from his push cart on the streets of Manhattan.
Trailer
Modern Times (1936)
87m; U.S.
Director: Charlie Chaplin
Cast: Charlie Chaplin, Paulette Goddard and Henry Bergman
Synopsis (IMDB): Chaplin’s last ‘silent’ film, filled with sound effects, was made when everyone else was making talkies. Charlie turns against modern society, the machine age, (The use of sound in films ?) and progress. Firstly we see him frantically trying to keep up with a production line, tightening bolts. He is selected for an experiment with an automatic feeding machine, but various mishaps leads his boss to believe he has gone mad, and Charlie is sent to a mental hospital… When he gets out, he is mistaken for a communist while waving a red flag, sent to jail, foils a jailbreak, and is let out again. We follow Charlie through many more escapades before the film is out.
Trailer
Matewan (1987)
135m; U.S.
Director: John Sayles
Cast: Chris Cooper, James Earl Jones, Mary McDonnell, David Strathairn
Synopsis: John Sayles, one of the leading independent directors in the world, came to WV in 1983 to film one of the most famous confrontations between laborer and owners in the town of Matewan, Mingo County, WV, 1920. It took him four years to finally finish the film, directing “Brother from another Planet” during that time period. Coal miners, struggling to form a union, are up against company operators and Baldwin-Felts agents. Black and Italian miners, brought in by the company to break the strike, are caught between the two forces. Union activist and ex-Wobbly Joe Kenehan (Chris Cooper), sent to help organize the union, determines to bring the local, black, and Italian groups together. Drawn from an actual incident; the characters of Sheriff Sid Hatfield (David Strathairn), Mayor Cabell Testerman (Josh Mostel), C. E. Lively (Bob Gunton) , and Few Clothes Johnson were based on real people. James Earl Jones plays Few Clothes Johnson, a black coal miner who joins the union to stop massive abuses. The execution of Sheriff Hatfield on the steps of the McDowell County Courthouse steps by Baldwin-Felts agents led to the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest armed labor conflict in American history. Music by WV native Hazel Dickens. Nominated for an Oscar by Haskell Wexler for best cinematography. Filmed in Thurmond and the New River Gorge, WV.
Trailer
Key Clip
In this scene, Chris Cooper’s organizer character gives an impassioned speech about the meaning of being in a union, with an explicit attack on racism and other forces that would divide workers.
Norma Rae (1979)
110m; U.S.
Director: Martin Ritt
Cast: Sally Fields, Beau Bridges, Ron Liebman
Synopsis: Sally Fields won an Oscar for Best Actress for her portrayal of a Southern textile worker in the 1970s. Faced with problems and challenges both personal and at work, Norma Rae proves receptive to the message of a union organizer seeking to start a drive at her plant. The film is based on the real story of Crystal Lee Sutton and the ACTWU’s drive to organize JP Stevens’ plants in the South in the 1970s.
Trailer
Key Scene
North Country (2005)
126m; U.S.
Director: Niki Caro
Cast: Charlize Theron, Jeremy Renner and Frances McDormand
Synopsis (IMDB): A fictionalized account of the first major successful sexual harassment case in the United States — Jenson vs. Eveleth Mines, where a woman who endured a range of abuse while working as a miner filed and won the landmark 1984 lawsuit.
(NYT) Set in and around the iron mines of Northern Minnesota between 1989 and 1991, Niki Caro’s muscular and absorbing drama addresses workplace sexual harassment at its most primitive and bludgeoning. A dowdy Charlize Theron is Josey Aimes, a poor single mother and newly hired miner. Hated by the men and unprotected by the union, Josey and her peers are relentlessly groped and sadistically bullied — behavior that reflects a community riddled with regressive misogyny.
Driven by righteous anger and inspired by a spearheading real-life lawsuit, the movie rises above its fight-the-power formula with a fabulous cast — including Sissy Spacek, Frances McDormand and Woody Harrelson — and a potent sense of place. In Chris Menges’s gorgeously smoky shots of blasted earth and gnashing machinery, spraying explosions and blackened pits, we see an oppressively alien landscape that’s hostile to man and woman alike. JEANNETTE CATSOULIS
Trailer
Riffraff (1936)
94m; U.S.
Director: J. Walter Ruben
Cast: Jean Harlow, Spencer Tracy and Una Merkel
Synopsis: Fisherman Dutch marries cannery worker Hattie. After he is kicked out of his union and fired from his job he leaves Hattie who steals money for him and goes to jail. He gets a new job, foils a plot to dynamite the ship, and promises to wait for Hattie.
Trailer
Roger & Me (1989)
91m; U.S.
Director: Michael Moore
Synopsis: Michael Moore’s documentary about the decline of Flint, Michigan and the role of GM in the deindustrialization of a once-thriving industrial city.
Trailer
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